An Occupy Wall Street protester yells at police officers as they make arrests in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. Protesters in suits and T-shirts with union slogans left work early to march with activists who have been camped out in Zuccotti Park for days. Photo: Seth Wenig

The ‘Occupy’ demonstrations are the blowback – long overdue – of the foreign-plus-financial policy of a great power which has for long dampened criticsm and fair a representative politics at home.

The ‘Occupy’ demonstrations express a broader public understanding that the basic source of the crisis facing millions of people lies in the social interests of the sprawling and powerful global financial system – of which Wall St is one symbol; a powerful symbol but nevertheless one amongst many similar symbols.

Dogged by debt and haunted by ever newer forms of deprivation, the American protesters have ‘taken’ Wall St to call and end to the reign of the giant banks that dominate the US and world economy. Their politics is determined not by the popular will, but by the interests of a cunning financial aristocracy ruthlessly absorbed with defending its wealth by impoverishing the majority of their fellow citizens.

The answer – Occupy Everywhere!

Mother Jones has provided a very useful timeline of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

July 13: The Canadian magazine Adbustersmakes a call to Occupy Wall Street.

August 30: The hacktivist collective known as Anonymous releases a video answering the call and encouraging others to follow suit.

September 17: Nearly 1,000 gather to protest corporate greed and begin occupying the financial district in New York City.

September 22: Demonstrators interrupt a Sotheby’s Auction, “in a show of solidarity with the art handler’s union that had been locked out.” This is the first instance of labor unions and the movement locking step.

September 24: 80 protestors are arrested during a peaceful march; a video of a police officer pepper-spraying a nonthreatening woman goes viral.